Wednesday, June 1, 2011

After taking the first two games of the series against the Athletics, the Yankees will go up against Gio Gonzalez in the Wednesday matinee. Gonzalez is not as young as Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson, as this is his age 26 season. He's another groundball pitcher, though not as extreme as his younger rotation mates. He'll walk more guys and get more strikeouts. His strikeout pitch is an 80 mph power curveball that has a huge groundball rate. I'm going to make this one quick, so here are your Gio Gonzalez spin charts, pitch results table, and plate locations (in tabular form this time) for 2011.

mph

#

Swing Rate

Whiff Rate

Zone Rate

Ball Rate

nsCall Rate

GB Rate

Sinker

91.8

350

.406

.162

.491

.409

.313

.491

Fastball

92.7

349

.427

.242

.387

.390

.320

.286

Curveball

80.1

356

.435

.329

.396

.410

.274

.667

Changeup

84.0

57

.263

.457

.456

.579

.214

.429

1112

.415

.254

.426

.412

.296

.480

High OZ

10.9%

20.3%

5.6%

1.8%

11.7%

High IZ

22.6%

24.6%

11.8%

8.8%

19.1%

Middle

33.4%

35.5%

27.8%

17.5%

31.5%

Low IZ

23.1%

13.8%

19.9%

36.8%

19.9%

Low OZ

10.0%

5.7%

34.8%

35.1%

17.9%

SI

FF

CU

CH

ALL

vs LHB

Inside OZ

Inside IZ

Middle

Outside IZ

Outside OZ

SI

8.0%

36.0%

26.0%

20.0%

10.0%

FF

1.4%

7.2%

20.9%

37.4%

33.1%

CU

3.8%

9.6%

26.9%

24.0%

35.6%

ALL

3.4%

13.0%

23.9%

29.7%

30.0%

vs RHB

Inside OZ

Inside IZ

Middle

Outside IZ

Outside OZ

SI

0.3%

10.3%

26.0%

40.0%

23.3%

FF

25.2%

29.5%

27.6%

13.8%

3.8%

CU

16.7%

24.6%

36.9%

13.1%

8.7%

CH

1.8%

21.1%

36.8%

26.3%

14.0%

ALL

11.8%

20.4%

30.5%

24.1%

13.2%

His curveball is probably his best pitch, but his fastball also gets a lot of whiffs. He can be wild, as he's walked four and a half per nine innings over his career, but he's still got nasty stuff. The way this series has gone so far, though, facing good pitchers means nothing to the Yankees.